You were right, Billy Bob - forgive us

I've been trying very hard NOT to write about Jian Ghomeshi, but it's been difficult, bombarded as I am by Facebook links and such. But this Toronto Star piece from 2009 now resonates in a whole new way. Back then, Ghomeshi was the darling boy of the CBC, supposedly rescuing it from its loyal and longstanding audience of unhip boomers (horrors!) and attracting a whole new crowd of multi-pierced-and-tattoed hipster doofuses. In fact, so long as they were younger, it didn't really matter what they looked like.

It just wasn't cool to diss Ghomeshi. Everybody loved him. You HAD to love him, or you looked unhip. I'd say "nobody knew what an asshole he was behind the scenes", but the truth is, plenty of people knew and kept their mouths shut in craven cowardice. Everyone was afraid of him. He was a serial grabbist, assault artist and head-puncher/choker who terrified women into keeping silent for fear of losing their jobs or, worse, losing their credibility forever.

So Billy Bob Thornton was reviled for calling Ghomeshi an "asshole", but I cannot think of a better description of the man. Billy Bob recently made a surprise guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory, which many call the coolest thing on TV, while Ghomeshi is cowering under a bed somewhere, maybe in a BDSM club in some anonymous basement in Etobicoke.

Stick to your guns for long enough, and eventually you just might win out.

By: Raju Mudhar Tech Reporter, Kenyon Wallace Published on Fri Apr 10 2009

Billy Bob not done with the barbs


Billy Bob Thornton elicited boos and catcalls last night at Massey Hall as he attempted to explain his bizarre behaviour during an interview on CBC Radio on Wednesday.

Referring to Jian Ghomeshi, the host of CBC Radio's Q, as an "a--hole," the Oscar-winning actor turned musician interrupted his band's set three songs in to give his side of the story.

After commenting on the beautiful theatre and the legendary performer they were opening for (Willie Nelson), Thornton said, "It seems as if when I say something it's in the news."

When that drew boos, Thornton continued: "Boo all you want, but I want to say something.... We're really happy to be here, but I need to say something. I talked to this a--hole yesterday.

"I sat down and talked with this guy. He and his producers say, `We promise you we won't say that' (meaning references to Thornton's acting career). The very first thing they said was that.

"I don't really like sensationalism," he added. "If you look someone in the eyes and promise them something, and you don't do it, you don't get the interview. That's the way it goes."

The explanation was met by further boos and catcalls of, "Here comes the gravy," a reference to Thornton's description of Canadian audiences as "mashed potatoes with no gravy" during his interview with Ghomeshi.

Before the show, Thornton told a Star reporter that he "loves Canada." When asked what he meant by the mashed potatoes comment, Thornton, wearing a thick layer of skin-tone facial makeup and sucking on a cigarette, said: "I was talking about the guy who was interviewing me."

The interview, which featured Thornton claiming he didn't know what some of Ghomeshi's questions meant, responding to others with non-sequiturs, then chastising Ghomeshi for referring to the actor's film career, has gone viral.

More than 600,000 viewers had watched the clip on YouTube by 8 p.m. yesterday, while a CBC spokesperson said the network had received roughly 3,700 blog responses and emails. Before last night's show, the second in which the Boxmasters opened for Nelson and Ray Price, several fans were miffed at Thornton's radio performance.

"He's an a--hole," said Nick Goodman of Aurora. "He was probably drinking backstage or something."

Danny Duckworth of Toronto said he likes Thornton as a comedian and actor, but "I couldn't care less what he thinks. If I want to get up and dance, that's my choice," he added, a reference to Thornton's comment that Canadians just sort of sit there.

"If Billy Bob doesn't like it, he should quit."

Ghomeshi could not be reached for comment last night. Earlier yesterday, he said it was one of the most difficult interviews he's ever done and he was taken aback at Thornton's strange responses (sample: when Ghomeshi asked when the Boxmasters were formed, Thornton answered, "I'm not sure what that means").

Ghomeshi also said it would have been irresponsible to his audience not to mention Thornton's acting past during his introduction (he did not ask any questions about acting during the interview).

"Our policy is that we don't allow anybody to tell us what we can and cannot say," said Ghomeshi. "Beyond that, it was this notion and the language that he used during the interview that I thought was unfortunate, that we were `instructed' to say this and that. And I think that does raise interesting questions about ideas around how much journalism is to be controlled, especially when it comes to arts and entertainment and culture, and I think that that's a concern.

"The reality is, and I tried to explain this in the interview, these guys have only been together for two years. You just don't get the kind of national press they are getting without the incentive being something like his career past.... And I think if he could graciously accept that and say, `Hey, I want to focus on the music, but I get that the reason we're here is because I'm a movie star that's won an Oscar.' There's not a lot of people who can say that."

Ghomeshi felt like he was "in the middle of a tsunami" yesterday. He was being interviewed by media around the world. "The nice thing is the reaction that I'm getting from journalists around the world that is really kind of sweet, but it is all very odd ... and a lot of people, especially in this country, seemed to support the way I did things," he said. "Maybe it was a little Canadian to be polite, but I can live with that."

Thornton's interview was being compared to the recent Joaquin Phoenix appearance, in which the actor turned rapper sulked through a chat on Late Show With David Letterman.

With files from The Canadian Press

 

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Sheldon Cooper's worst nightmare

This has been a Gorn sort of week. Oh, it started out OK. Next week will be better, I promise myself.

When things like this show up, your only hope is that a stunt double will take the fall for you. But that seldom happens outside of science fiction.

Sometimes, things just come atcha. And you can't do nothin' but wait for the commercial.

The Gorn roars loudly, and carries a very big stick. Run, Kirk. . . RUN!!

"No. . . no Gorn!" Poor Sheldon Cooper finds the Gorn almost as terrifying as Goofy. Worse, though, the Gorn is taking up sacred space. "That's where I sit!"

But wait, there's more! If you take advantage of this special TV offer, 

we'll send you TWO monsters for the price of one!

Yes! This is the amazing MUGATU, who jumps out of the bushes and harasses Captain Kirk for no reason! The Mugatu, who only looks like a man in an albino gorilla suit adapted with dinosaur spikes and a rhino horn! The Mugatu, who seems to have taken lessons from Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Trio! The Mugatu, who. . . but let's cut Desilu some slack here. Desi Arnaz probably used up all the budget screwing expensive hookers.

It's gratifying to see McCoy blast this guy with the zipper in his back. It's one of the better special effects of early Trek. But who knows when the Mugatu will return?

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Five deadly words you never want to hear

“I love you."

"Thank you!”

I heard this deadly five-word conversation on The Big Bang Theory not long ago, as part of Leonard and Penny’s six-year-long dance around each other. They sleep together; they don’t sleep together. They date; they don’t date. They see other people for a while, sometimes quite a while, and then. . .

And then poor, vulnerable Leonard drops the l-bomb.

Penny, completely disconcerted, reacts with a stunned silence, almost as if she's been slapped. Then blurts out the response that makes Leonard's heart sink into the floor.

"Thank you."

To lay oneself open in what may be the most vulnerable statement that exists, only to have it politely dismissed, indicates that the person you had all those tender, passionate feelings for dwells on a separate planet, and probably always will.

People assume this disastrous emotional misfire only happens in "relationships", which has somehow come to mean "boy-girl with sex". But it used to apply more broadly. I know about the l-bomb because it happened to me a few years ago, and though it wasn't BGWS, the script was almost exactly the same. The other person, someone I knew as a close friend through a 12-step program, probably believed they were responding appropriately and even kindly. Fairly. Isn’t that the right thing to say when you receive a compliment?

Of course. "Thank you" is a perfectly good response. 

Is "love" always seen as "romantic love" now and nothing else? I am beginning to wonder. Or do those three little words just cause certain people to turn tail and run?

In my case, it seems to me I’ve lived my life on the dark side of the moon, meaning I give much more than I receive. Oddly enough, I am often seen as selfish because what I give isn’t understood, or else isn’t the “right” thing and does not exactly fit the slot of what is required. What I have to give is suspect or too different, even if it represents an avalanche of love.

In fact, I think that’s the whole problem.

When love is doled out with an eyedropper, it does not exactly match an avalanche of love. When do things match in life? Never. But being on another planet, a very lonely one, is a whole different thing.

When, after years and years of dissatisfaction and pain, you finally break and begin to explain to the other person what you think is really going on, they are completely confused. Not only do they expect you to stick to the script (i. e. accept them exactly the way they are, even if they have had multiple drug slips and are going down for the third time), they are shocked and baffled and even offended when you deviate from it and don’t seem to care if you are finally expressing what you really feel.

But that’s not the purpose of the relationship. Not any more. It has become a chess game: your move; my move. If anyone deviates, it’s wrong and spoils the rhythm, requiring an immediate correction.

This has happened to me too many times, and not just in the perilous waters of 12-step groups where, in spite of a lot of smoke-blowing, emotional dishonesty and manipulation is practically the norm. I don’t know why I am always at the bottom end of the seesaw. I suppose the self-help gurus would say that I engineer it that way, that I make it happen myself (neatly letting all those abusive jerks off the hook: how they must love this theory!) in order to shortchange myself. And when you have grown up with alcoholism and sexual abuse as daily fare (completely denied by the family as nasty lies), perhaps it’s not hard to see why.

Any love I have seems to hang  by a spider’s thread. I’m an emotional sharecropper: “yes, massuh!” What’s the matter with me? I should be more grateful. Or so it seems. When your best intentions to help are met with an offended silence, when you risk being gutted by opening your soul ONE MORE TIME, when you make the ultimate statement and receive a handshake in return, it devastates in a way I cannot really describe.

I love you. Thanks! I’m dying inside. That's too bad!  I’m going to commit suicide now. Here, I’ll show you to the bridge!

It’s not quite like that, but when the other person is completely puzzled and thinks you’re being unreasonable and even mean when you somehow hope for more, you get that ice floe feeling. A nice pan of ice; a good hard shove.

I love you. Nice knowing you.

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The sugar daddy ambush

Do you know what I shit-hate these days?

Stupid people. Or maybe I always have.

We had a nice time at the Canada Day celebrations yesterday at Coquitlam Town Centre Park. Yes, a very nice time looking at displays, sampling food, listening to multicultural music, watching kids on climbing walls, and all those Canada-day-type things.

Then as we were walking along, just walking along in complete innocence, a woman, low to the ground and of indeterminate age, literally ran at us and pressed a booklet into my hands.

“This is a book that’s very helpful for seniors with issues,” she chirped.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Give it to him,” I said, pointing to my very grey, very-much-older husband.

“Oh, that’s what they all say,” she twittered. “I won’t admit to my age either, sweetie.”

My mouth opened and Bill tugged me onwards, sensing a coming storm. “Thanks a LOT,” I yelled back at her as we walked away. “Oh, don’t mention it,” the woman tweeted, obviously delighted she had snagged another victim.

I mean, Jesus!

She RUNS up to people whom she has decided are “old”. Old enough to qualify as “seniors”. This includes women. Last time I checked, most women are not thrilled and delighted to state their age if they’re, say, over 50. Not that it’s a bad thing, but let’s not jump the gun.

We all sort of hope we look at least a few years younger than our chronological age. I thought this was nearly universal. Isn’t it? If not, when did it change? (If you think this is the first time seniors' propaganda has been pressed on me, guess again.)

And to have someone RUN at you because you look like a suitable pigeon for a book on “seniors' issues” is atrocious. “Oh, look, some fossils walking along! I’d better catch them before they fall over.”

My husband thought I was overreacting and said (as I dumped the goddamned ripped-up booklet into the garbage: I glanced at it and it said, among other things, “Where to meet seniors”, so it was probably publicity for a disguised escort service), “It was because of me.”

Well, maybe it WAS because of him. He’s greyer than me, mostly because I color my hair. But please, no running after prey, especially not older prey! They might not be too thrilled to be recruited for the ranks of the over-65, particularly if they are a good many years younger.

And don’t tell me, as I am always condescendingly told, “Oh, don't feel bad. 'Senior' begins at 40”. That’s a load of bullshit and you know it. Would a 40-year-old woman, still deluding herself that she can have another baby like all those Hollywood stars, welcome a booklet on how to pick up a doddering old sugar daddy?

Oh, and. This is even worse. It’s those people who miss irony, and think YOU’RE dumb.

I had a recent attack of this on Facebook. Somebody named a scientific principle, one often quoted on The Big Bang Theory (which is my religion), and I riffed on it in an ironic manner.  The person posted a “now, now, now, that’s not what it means at all” sort of reply, telling me exactly what the principle was and why I had gone so wrong in misinterpreting it.

Why are people so thick? Why do they always turn it around so that ***I*** am the stupid and/or ignorant one, and that I need to be immediately set straight? Whoever these people are, and most of them wear penises to work every day, they do not “get” irony, have perhaps never heard of it, and take absolutely everything literally.

In other words. . . they are men.

It’s not too nice when a joke falls flat, but when the other person has no idea it IS a joke and corrects you for your misinformation, it’s worse than annoying and leaves you with an insulted, put-down, even pitied feeling. Meantime you know you are skating rings around this dullard in wordplay skills and subtlety, not to mention basic intelligence.

But who wins in the ignoramus sweepstakes? Who comes out looking far more clever and erudite?  Could it be me? Are you out of your freaking MIND? Never mind that I’m invariably right, because being right has nothing to do with it. It's all about power and putting so-called "ignorant" people (usually women, assumed to be about as smart as Kha Kha Kardashian - oops, her name is Khloe - I'm so sorry - I got it wrong!) in their place.

Do I think I am smarter than other people (a sin worse than murder)? I don’t just think it, I KNOW it, and Facebook proves it to me every blessed, persecuted day of my life. (Oh, and. This deserves a post of its own, but I will mention it here. Someone will refer to something atrocious, destructive, and categorically WRONG. Then someone else will say, "Oh, it's always been like that." Some people, fancying themselves to be historians because they watch the History Channel, will say, "People have done that since the Etruscans in the year 14 billion B. C." The fact that "we've been doing this for a long time" is supposed to end the discussion. Suddenly, now the most heinous behaviour is OK and acceptable because we've been doing it forever! Make sense? 

Add to this one another ludicrous fallacy. I call it "men do this too!". Anything men do automatically justifies whatever negative, weak or shameful thing women are doing. It renders their sins more acceptable, though only a small percentage of this filters through to women. But at least they aren't seen as the snivelling bitches they were before. . . because after all, "men cry at the movies too".)

(I have to confess something really awful. I think that picture is really Khim Kardashian - or is that Kim - oh, will someone please set me straight here? And my much smarter boy friend just told me that the Etruscans didn't really live in 14 billion B. C. because the theme song of The Big Bang Theory says that that was when the universe was created. Why do I bother keeping a blog at all? I'm just a silly little girl.)

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The STRANGEST "separated at birth" ever seen!

If you've been following my blog for a while now - and I just fervently hope SOMEONE reads this, at least once in a while - you will have noticed my recurrent series, Separated at Birth. Anthony Perkins and Gregory Peck. Harold Lloyd and Jake Gyllenhaal. That sort of thing.

Well.

I stay up way too late sometimes and just look for things to muck around with to use on my blog. I love diddling around with images that move, but I like images that don't move too. I also wanted to see if I could find a good YouTube video on the Hapsburgs, preferably a comedy: Take it on the Chin Charlie, Louie the Lip and Friends, whatever. An animated series on King Charles II of Spain, also known as El Hexado because he was so fucking ugly, would have filled the bill, but all I could find was a very strange 2-minute "reconstruction" of the face of Marie Antoinette. 

I could find almost no information about this, but it started with the standard portrait of her and slowly morphed into something a lot more realistic. Someone in the comments section said something about a death mask, so it may have been reconstructed from that, though death masks, I find, generally aren't very flattering.

But as it slowly morphed, I cried into the void, "Hey. That's not Ms. Let-Them-Eat-Cake at all. That's Kaley Cuoco!"

Yes.

The adorable female lead on the hit comedy The Big Bang Theory, which is now on so many times a day that my DVR just can't keep up. I think it looks EXACTLY like her, or at least close enough, though Kaley definitely has Marie beat in the cheekbone department.

The comments under the video mentioned Marie's "Hapsburg lip", so like all the rest of those aristocratic swine she must've been hopelessly inbred. I don't see the lip here, but the picture's not in 3D, is it? I don't know if Kaley has any Hapsburg blood in her, and to be honest I've been trying to figure out just what sort of a name that is anyway - sounds kind of Portuguese. So now I'm off on yet another search.

SPECIAL Bonus Creep-o-rama Link! One of the creepiest links I've ever found, next to Victorian Post-Mortem Photography. In fact, this one is worse.


http://www.undyingfaces.com/info/

It has got THE WORST pictures of dead guys' faces all melted down, or with their mouths tied shut. I don't know when they stopped doing this shit, but there's one of Alfred Hitchcock that's just ridiculous, it looks so much like him.
There's also one of Timothy Leary (but I forgot to save it). To be honest, I thought they froze his head. I saw a video once of a bunch of scientists carting his severed head around. It was too sickening.

Special Post-Post Bonus-Bonus: There are all sorts of these creep-o sites, apparently, for sickos who like to look at death masks. Nobody WE know. This one is a sort of Greatest Hits list. But I'm beginning to be suspicious. Some of these masks are of rather murky provenance and might have turned up in some third-rate history prof's cellar in 1980 or something. One site even said, astonishingly, that it was clear Abraham Lincoln "had not been assassinated". Gee, then I wonder what all the fuss was about?

http://oocradio.blogspot.ca/search/label/death%20mask

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EXPLAINED: why kids get ADHD

I don't know if anybody except me remembers a strange and wonderful show called TV Nation, Michael Moore's first foray into network television. This was before he became a self-important, helium-inflated buffoon who will do anything to call attention to himself.

We watched this show on (when else?) Friday nights, me and the kids. God, that was back when me and my kids watched TV together! We watched TV Nation, St. Elsewhere and (of course) SCTV. The kids were just pups then and I felt very close to them. Now they're practically middle-aged, and it's different.

Of course it's different. But what I wanted to point out with this dissertation is how much things have accelerated since the early '90s. TV Nation was considered cutting edge, hip, etc. (though watching some of the segments now makes me wince), and nowhere was this more evident than in the opening. It had rapidly-flashing images accompanied by electric guitar playing a sort of fluffy domestic tune. Later on I discovered it was almost an exact copy of the theme song to Rhoda. 

Look at it now, and bo-o-o-o-oy, is it slo-o-o-o-ow. Each image lasts a full second, an eternity in today's  air time. The theme lasts about a minute and a half, which was common then. Compare and contrast to what some call today's hippest sitcom, The Big Bang Theory  (which my granddaughter loves:  huzzah!):

And they wonder why kids get ADHD.

(Post-blog. Now I also know why I make so many gifs. I think they're magic, which probably reveals my age, but more to the point, who the hell is going to watch a 10- or 15-minute YouTube video to see the 5 seconds I'm referring to? Instead, here are the 5 seconds, endlessly repeated in case you (like everyone else) can't absorb a ton of information in a microsecond.

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Time traveller on Blackfriars Bridge

Could it be? Or have I been watching too much of the Big Bang Theory and Sheldon's endless theorizing about the possibility of time travel?

I have this little habit of making gifs out of YouTube videos - the shorter the better (which is why some of the gorgeous ones I made tonight wouldn't post - they were probably way too long). I found some stunning footage taken in London around 1900, in an era where the horse was the main mode of transportation, women wore corsets and skirts to the ground, and men were always properly attired in dark suits, overcoats and bowler hats (top hats for more formal occasions).

The uniformity of dress is one of the more remarkable aspects of these tiny visual time machines (along with the eerie three-dimensional quality of the ancient film: how did they ever achieve such an effect, or was it somehow pulled out of the depths of the antique silver nitrate by digital restoration and HD?). The aspect of the people, their facial expressions and formal bodily postures, reveal how very different these times were. Again and again I see women wearing a sort of uniform: a white blouse, often with puffy sleeves,which they called a shirtwaist, and a long dark skirt. The waist is so small that it's plain it didn't get that way on its own. Hair is piled atop the head with pins, and going without a hat is simply unthinkable.

Men are similarly hatted. Even poor blokes could afford an old battered one. A straw boater didn't cost you much, did it? To go about hatless - well, it was simply disrespectful, almost criminal. At the very least, it was suspicious.

As this three-second snippet of time on Blackfriars Bridge (first gif) endlessly repeats itself, we see carriages going by in a kind of dreamy haze, and people walking along the bridge - a woman all in black, a widow perhaps, walking in that stiff-spined way corseted women were forced to walk. Behind her is a couple so properly attired that they could have been cut out of a magazine. But who's this out front? Who's this bloke, not very visible at first because he's walking beside a carriage - the one pulling his hand out of his pocket and looking right at the camera (bloody sauce!)? He's wearing a fine enough coat, and he walks as if he owns the bridge, with a sort of swaggering stride.

Where's he going, then, that he should be walking (hatless!) with such an important air? Who does he think he is?

I'll tell you who *I* think he is.

He is not of his time.

He's from Somewhere Else. More specifically, he's from Now. Whether he projected himself into the past (meaning he's in two places at once: hey, quantum physics tells us it's a cinch, and the saints have been managing it for centuries) or just jumped, bodily, with his whole being, I KNOW this guy did not belong in Edwardian England striding, bareheaded and insouciant, across Blackfriars bloody Bridge back in 1896.

Looking more closely - and it's too bad I can't get a tight closeup of such a grainy figure - it may be that he isn't even wearing a tie. No one went without a tie unless they were in hospital - in a lunatic asylum, I mean. He just sort of flaps along without a care, so informal as to alarm the passersby.

If you plucked out any of the other figures and plunked them down in modern society, we'd think, oh, how lovely, there must be an Edwardian exhibition at the museum. Or something. If you plunked HIM down,  no one would pay him any notice.

BECAUSE HE IS NOT OF HIS TIME. 

He is not of 1896, he is of "now", which means that he knows things. Why do you think progress accelerated so wildly in the 20th century? Was it seeded by these blokes from the future (their future, I mean - this time shit is full of slippery concepts and paradox).

What shall we call him? Roger? How did he get back there? Is he from OUR future, when time travel  really does exist? Why don't we see time travellers walking around in the here and now? The only ones I've ever met believe in conspiracy theories and wear hats made of tin foil.

Roger will ever remain a mystery, breezing along the bridge 117 years ago. Not one atom of him would remain - not in a normal time-line, I mean. In truth, Roger may be walking around right now. The other Roger, the parallel one? My brain aches - a drowsy numbness pains my sense - and it's definitely time to go to bed.

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